Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 154368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 617(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 617(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
I turned them over in my hands. Her blood was still there, dried along the tops of each barrel in that thin, reddish dark line. Dust from the explosion had settled over them, dulling the color, but the line held.
Unbroken.
I thought about the ritual. Nyomi cutting her palm without flinching. The blood dripping onto the metal. The way she looked at me when she said come back.
I'd walked into a maze built to kill me. Stepped through a pleasure district crawling with my father's men. Stood twenty feet from a mine that erased three men from existence.
And I was still here.
Untouched.
My brother was still breathing beside me. Reo was still standing too.
I ran my thumb along the dried blood on the barrel.
Did you protect us, Tora? Maybe. Either way. . .I’m leaving and coming home.
I pressed the guns to my lips the way I had before we'd descended, closed my eyes, and breathed her blood in.
I can’t wait to see you.
The elevator slowed and then stopped.
I opened my eyes.
The doors slid open.
The two Scales and guards stepped out first with their weapons sweeping the space.
Nothing.
We followed them out into a backstage area.
I could hear music. A full orchestra playing something classical. And beyond that, the sound of an audience. People clapping. Laughter.
There was a heavy curtain on our right separating us from the stage. I could see the glow of stage lights bleeding through the edges.
A couple of stagehands were moving equipment in the background. One of them looked up and saw us.
"Hey," he stared. "Who the hell are you?"
Then he saw the guns.
“Oh. Umm.” His hands went up immediately and he backed away, eyes wide. “Sorry.”
Another stagehand appeared and dropped the white flowers he'd been holding. They scattered across the floor. Some rolled to my feet.
My stomach clenched.
White flowers.
The dream flashed behind my eyes.
Just a fraction of a second.
The grey sky.
The white chrysanthemums.
The black water.
I shook it off.
Not now.
The stagehands rushed away.
The music continued. The performance was still happening on the other side of that curtain.
The audience had no idea we were here.
Reo touched the mic. “How close are you to the theater?”
A crackle of static came, and then the first responded, “Ten minutes, sir.”
Another said, “Fifteen.”
“Get here faster, even if you have to run people over.”
They both answered, “Yes, sir.”
We moved forward slowly.
Guns out. Eyes scanning every stagehand, corner, and shadow.
"Okay." Hiroko looked around and then turned back to face me. And for the first time since we’d begun, tension drained from her face.
The tightness around her eyes softened. Her shoulders dropped from where they'd been living near her ears for the past hour. Even her hands had stopped trembling.
She looked like a woman who had just set down something impossibly heavy.
Relief covered her.
Real relief.
The kind that reaches the eyes.
She smiled at me. "I think we're safe. All we have to do now is—"
A bullet slammed into her forehead.
A hole opened right at the center.
And for a fraction of a second—a sliver of time so thin it shouldn't have existed—her smile was still there.
Still warm.
Still relieved.
Like her face hadn't gotten the message yet.
Then the back of her head exploded.
Her blood hit me before her body moved.
Hot.
Wet.
Across my face, my neck, my chest. It landed on my lips and I tasted copper and salt.
Her eyes stayed open.
But the light behind them—that steady, stubborn, surviving light that had guided us through a labyrinth, stopped us from walking into a mine, handed us keys with shaking fingers and then steadied herself because that's who she was—that light went out.
Her legs gave out and she began to crumple, folding sideways.
I caught her.
The orchestra swelled on the other side of the curtain. Some song with strings. One that was so beautiful that it had no right to exist in the same moment as this.
People fired at the threat while I stayed stiff with grief. Claws raced off. Hiro yelled something in my ear and began yanking at my arm.
But I was frozen and staring at her.
I didn't know why I caught Hiroko.
She was already gone.
My hands had moved before my mind could stop them. . .and. . .
She was in my arms. . .
And. . .
Her head fell back. . .
And her blood ran down my wrists and soaked into my sleeves. . .
And I could feel the warmth leaving her. . .
And my chest, my heart, my soul drowned in so much guilt.
Horrifying, suffocating guilt.
She'd saved our lives today, but I hadn't saved hers.
My brother shoved at me. "Kenji! Put her down! We have to go!!"
I looked at her face one last time. Her lips were still parted. Still shaped around the word she never finished.
Hiroko. . .
Chapter thirty-nine
Bullets and Fire
Kenji
On the other side of the curtain, laughter erupted—bright, full, delighted. A thousand hands clapped in rhythm. They had no idea a woman had just died ten feet behind velvet.